Video brevi e TikTok: il racconto come linguaggio simbolico

This text explores the reasons for the popularity of the TikTok app in recent years and examines the ways in which such Internet short videos are disseminated and their symbolic language. It covers various disciplines such as computing, sociology, communication and semiotics. The article begins with the origins, development, artificial intelligence algorithms and applications of TikTok short videos, and moves on to the concerns raised by the massive capital injection into the platform after its maturation; the formation of short video communities on the Internet; the interaction of symbols; the symbolic language of short video symbols; and the analysis of TikTok data, in an attempt to build a complete picture of the world of TikTok. In between, we insert analyses and explanations of some worrying or complex topics, such as: reflections on the "bad images" of the Internet; symbolic interaction theory from Mead to Blumer to Goffman; the dissemination of TikTok videos and the "meme" theory; and the commercial operation of capitalization. The article discusses how TikTok's short videos are learned, created, or processed for dissemination, how symbolic languages and communities are formed in the vast Internet network, and concludes with an outlook on the development of the short video industry.